FOUR QUEER TALES
There was his Mother, too; smooth, dear cheek,
Lips as smooth as a blackbird's beak.
Pretty arched eyebrows, the daintiest nose —
While the smoke of the baking deliciously rose.
"Come, Sammie," she cries, "your old Mammikin's joy,
Climb up on your stool, supper's ready, my boy.
Bring in the candle, and shut out the night;
There's goose, baked taties and cabbage to bite.
Why, bless the wee lamb, he's all shiver and shake,
And you'd think from the look of him scarcely awake!
If 'ee glour wi' those eyes, Sam, so dark and round,
The elves will away with 'ee, I'll be bound!"
So Sam and his Mother by wishes three
Were made just as happy as happy can be.
And there — with a bumpity tail to wag —
Sat laughing, with tongue out, their old dog, Shag.
To clatter of patter, bones, giblets and juice,
Between them they ate up the whole of the goose.
But time is a river for ever in flow,
The weeks went by as the weeks must go,
Soon fifty-two to a year did grow,
The long years passed, one after another,
Making older and older our Sam and his Mother;
And, alas and alack, with nine of them gone,
Poor Shag lay asleep again under a stone,
And a sorrowful dread would sometimes creep
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